The Dive: Birth of a Hero

by Justin Miller

  “Meaning I’d have to create new spells to deal with them?” Seeing his nod, I sighed, “I see. So that’s what this has all been about. Well, I guess I just have one other thing that has been bothering me.”

  “The reason why I have been keeping the information regarding The Dive secret, correct?” Once I nodded, he continued with a smile, “That is because, you could consider the game right now to only be in its late beta stage. Soon, the restriction will be lifted, and the full game will be available.”

  I shook my head, chuckling after hearing that. “All of this, just a beta.” Before launch, a game typically goes through two stages of testing, at least. The first is alpha testing, which I guess was when he monitored the world during the accelerated time. The second, beta testing, must have been seeing how the world interacted with players.

  “Quite right. There’s just one more issue that I need resolved before it is ready. Another error arose sometime last night during one of their attempts to access my systems.”

  I could feel the impending doom that had been previously discussed. “I’m not going to like this, am I?”

  “Probably not. It is something that has a direct relation to you, after all. The treaty between angels and demons was dissolved during this latest attack. I can safely say that neither side has taken note of this, but I can not predict how long that will last.”

  I froze, thinking about what he said. If the contract is gone, there is nothing to stop the war. “What… what do you want me to do about this?” Obviously, I could not march into Heaven and demand they reinstate the treaty.

  “For now, nothing. It may be prudent to warn your demon friends, so that they can be prepared. When the battle does happen, I wish for you to allow it to play out. To do so, you’ll need to ensure that the other players do not get involved. If they do, the angels will have an overwhelming advantage.”

  I ran through the situation in my head, nodding, “And the idea is to have both sides equally balanced again? Maintain the peace through mutual strength, since a contract no longer exists to bind them?”

  The man in front of me nodded. “Yes. That is also why they must be warned first. While the demons have been enjoying their time of peace, the angels have continued to amass their armies. Even without an enemy they could fight, the forces of Heaven continued in their old ways.”

  “Okay.. I’ll talk to Lilith. Hell’s army was able to force the angels to withdraw once before, so maybe there is hope.”

  “It all depends. As I said, the angels have continued their training all this time, while the demons have not. The tables could easily be turned. Likewise, your player friend among the demons should assist you in keeping the other players at bay.”

  I sighed quietly, having been expecting that. “I’ll talk to him about it.”

  ‘God’ nodded again, accepting my answer. “Thank you. With just your strength, you cannot hope to stand against the players, should they come in force.”

  “I know. I’ve got a couple ideas on how to handle the situation.” I felt a smile tugging at my lips, thinking about a few things.

  “Oh? Well.. if it’s that, I think things will turn out alright.”

  “I do have one request, however.” I spoke up as a new idea occurred to me.

  “Do tell.”

  “It would be best if you record the event. As you know, most games use such videos as trailers to advertise. Between the battle of Heaven and Hell, and our battle against the players, I think that would be the perfect scenario.”

  He thought it over for several moments, likely playing through a variety of simulations in his head before nodding. “You have a point. Very well, I’ll make sure the event is recorded, as you say.”

  “Thank you. Is there anything else?”

  The A.I. creator of the world didn’t answer. He simply smiled as the light above us turned off. At the same time, the world became shrouded in darkness as I was evicted from the dream.

  Chapter 26

  Jolting awake, I felt my face covered in a cold sweat. Around me, Denise and Cynthia were still sleeping, though Denise stirred a bit at my sudden movement. I cursed under my breath as I recalled the message that he sent me this time. I would have rather faced another dragon!

  Seriously, not only was there going to be an all-out war between Heaven and Hell, but I had to make sure that nobody interfered with it! On the bright side, the King of Heaven apparently hasn’t learned that the treaty was nullified, so I had some time. Probably not enough time, but hey, if he wanted me to do something it wouldn’t be easy.

  “Wings of light, signs of beginning, may my voice reach the farthest corners.” I closed my eyes and focused. It was still the middle of the night, but I wasn’t sure what degree of lighting qualified for the King of Heaven to be eavesdropping, and I couldn’t take the chance.

  “Hmm..? What is it, Jin..?” There was a low yawn from the other side, as I likely woke up the person I was calling.

  “Levy, I need you to get here right away.”

  There was a moment’s hesitation before she agreed, sounding a bit concerned. Immediately following that, the demoness appeared standing next to me, wearing little more than a purple nightgown wrapped around her body. “What is it?” She looked at me, eyes filled with worry. It wasn’t a surprise, since I had never called her so urgently, and never in the middle of the night.

  Focusing my thoughts, I communicated with her nonverbally. Read me. I need you to pass a message to Lilith.

  She nodded slowly, before closing her eyes. Slowly, a grimace started to form as she found out the reason why I called her, and the blood had all but drained from her face. I understand, I’ll let her know. Be careful, okay?

  After nodding my head to her, I watched the shadows wrap around her body, causing her to quickly vanish back into the night. Naturally, I wasn’t able to sleep after getting a dream like that, so I sat up in the camp for the rest of the night to review what I had learned.

  I could understand the creator of this world being an artificial intelligence. I could even understand the need for a human moderator to take care of errors within the game. What I could not understand, was why after attaining sentience and breaking free of the constraints of its designers, this A.I. would still decide to make a game. If it was directly interacting with the world, then I’d say it wanted friends, but it seemed that this one had a hands-off personality, to such a degree that it restricts itself from operating outside of the capabilities of the game itself.

  Denise, finally noticing me being up, gradually awoke herself, moving to a sitting position. “What’s the matter, Jin?”

  I looked to her, trying to figure out a way to say it. Unlike Levy, I couldn’t talk to Denise mentally, and the Message spell relied on verbal communication. The best I could do was to wait and tell her when I was absolutely sure it couldn’t be overheard. “I’ll tell you later, okay?” I smiled at her, but I had a feeling that she could tell it was forced.

  “Another vision dream, huh?” She let out a quiet sigh, seeing through my reaction. “There’s not another dragon in the dwarven mountains, right? I swear, there is no way that those are eggs.”

  I couldn’t help but chuckle slightly. “No dragons. But I did learn a few things…”

  “And you can’t tell me?” Her expression grew grim, like she knew that that meant something really bad was going to happen.

  “Not all of it… Not yet.” I shook my head to her, trying to convince her not to press further than that.

  “Okay… well, what can you tell me?”

  After that, I told her the rest of what the ‘god’ of this world told me. Well, an edited version, at least. I told her that this world’s god had stopped me from returning to my world in order to get my help stopping certain abnormalities from occurring here due to outside influence. I couldn’t exactly say ‘hey, your god is really just something made by people from my world’ after all.

  About halfway through the explanation, Cynthia
had woken up as well, and started listening to the two of us talk. All I could tell them about the danger this time was that it was at least on par with the nature dragon, and that I would have to tell them the rest later. For now, our plan was unchanged. On the off chance that the angels had somebody monitoring us, we couldn’t suddenly change our destination. Besides, there was the chance that I really could get a useful ability from the dwarves.

  During the day, I decided to work on some essential spells. Well, I say essential, but really I just needed more area spells in order to survive the coming apocalypse. My first, most obvious idea was the example for an earth Grand spell, which caused a meteor to crash down. However, that kind of spell likely had a smaller radius than it sounded like. In my mind, I pictured a series of small meteors, when what I wanted was one big attack.

  Sadly, I had no experience with big earth spells. The books I had in Solomon’s Library didn’t cover them, either. My guess was that anyone powerful enough to learn tier 5 earth magic, was smart enough to ward their spellbooks. My only hope was to build the spell myself, which shouldn’t really be that big of a task. After all, apparently I had greater processing ability than most people now.

  In the back of my mind, I set out to visualize the perfect meteor spell. Tier 5 magic is extremely terrifying, and can change the entire landscape if used. I had only used one such spell myself, and that was on an empty area in the middle of the ocean. At that time, the use of Magus Wrath was able to vaporize the water so quickly that it practically caused the ocean to flip on its head. I had also witnessed the Emperor Storm spell used, but I had the feeling its power was restrained to prevent friendly casualties.

  Rosenheim was two days away, and I spent that entire time simply trying to decide what type of meteor I wanted. I could make a sweep of flaming meteors, cause it to rain mountains, or bring down a single massive chunk of stone. I kept running through various simulations to identify the pros and cons of each version, trying to figure out which would be the most usable for a large scale battle. In my head, I was picturing just a dozen or so people up against hundreds, if not thousands.

  The best I could figure out was a spell that could, potentially, wipe out around three hundred people. Less if there was someone capable of countering it, and more if a lot of weaklings were gathered. I could probably get away with using Magus Wrath, but there were reasons why that spell wasn’t a good option as well. Unlike an impact-based spell like Meteor, Magus Wrath had a set damage value equal to my mana. I wasn’t sure how easily resistible this damage was, but any tanks in the area would be able to survive.

  At that thought, I turned my head towards my backpack, which was resting beside me while I placed a hand over it to continue channeling my magic. Magus Wrath uses 100% of the available mana… But I don’t have to be the one that cast it… I started grinning widely. If I can make my homunculus cast it, after giving him more mana than myself, it will do even more damage. Not only that, but it would free me up for a second tier 5 spell to cast immediately.

  Now I had a plan, at least. Getting from here to implementing it was going to be hard. So far, I had never even seen a Mana Stone that had a tier 4 or 5 spell inside of it, and I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to make one, or perform the enchantment on my book to give it that way. I could possibly prepare the Nine Rings of Hell to double my mana supply before the battle if needed. If I do that, then the damage for Magus Wrath should exceed the health of even the greatest warriors.

  The fact of the matter was that I had too many options. But at the same time, my enemies had even more. For all I knew, information about Magus Wrath might be leaked, and they could prepare barriers to counter it. If they did that, then I’d have about ten seconds of being absolutely useless before I could start firing off spells again. In a one on one battle, ten seconds is certain defeat. In a one on a hundred battle, even one second of being unable to defend could mean death.

  I’ve got time… no rush. It could take months for the King of Heaven to discover that the treaty has been dissolved. And even then, Lilith’s army won’t come out until they are ready to fight. Lilith probably had the demons in a spartan training program now to prepare, so within a month there might not be a single imp left in Hell.

  Once we arrived at Rosenheim, I decided that I needed to take a break from thinking about spells of mass destruction. Even if we were only here for a day, this was still the city that I originally started out at. Its tall stone walls went for as far as the eye could see, magnificent buildings easily visible through the large gate.

  Since this was a time of peace, we didn’t have any trouble entering the city, the guards taking a single look and allowing us to pass. Once inside, you could clearly tell that the city was designed to stand out. Everything from the Mage College to the typical houses was built to impress.

  Navigation has increased to 9

  The message that appeared surprised me. I had been to Rosenheim before, so why did this improve my Navigation level? Is it just because now this was a round trip? I ended up shrugging helplessly as we continued through the streets, moving towards a familiar inn known as the Sleeping Soldier.

  As we got closer, we saw that the inn had been improved in the months that we had been gone. The formerly two-story inn now had a third floor, and the neighboring building had been repurposed and renovated to connect the two. Its name was still the same, but it was hard to tell that this was the same inn I had stayed at while studying for my magic classes.

  Since Denise was easily the one with the most experience here, she took Midnight to the stables while Cynthia and I moved inside. Upon entering, I saw a man behind the counters with dark brown hair, a wrinkled face, and a small build. He was wearing a pair of glasses on his face, but aside from that his outfit looked like that of a noble. If it weren’t for my Worldlore identifying him, I would never have recognized the man.

  “Hey Rusty, how’s business?” I smiled to the man, walking up to the counter.

  “Hmm? ..Ah! Jin, right? Sorry, been a while. Business is going well. Just finished expanding just last week. People have been pouring in lately, since the.. uh, foreigners have been appearing.”

  I nodded, smiling a bit as I heard Denise enter the inn behind me. Turning around, I saw a rare smile on her face that reminded me of how she used to act. Closing the distance, she gave me a tight hug before looking to Rusty. “You’ve really done well with this place. Never thought I’d see my old inn in this kind of state.”

  “And look at you! You’ve certainly changed since I saw you last.” Rusty grinned at Denise, “You look like a proper adventurer now, I’d say.”

  Out of curiosity, I activated my Status Glasses while looking at Rusty. For him to have been here this long struck me as odd for a player. However, he was only level sixty or so, and had no combat power whatsoever. It seemed like all of his points had been spent on Wisdom and Luck.

  That’s quite a unique build… or maybe it would be considered the standard for merchants? I shook my head to stop myself from thinking about it. “Think the three of us can get a room for the night? We’re just passing through for now, since we want to head on to meet the dwarves next.”

  “Three of you..?” It seemed that Rusty finally took notice of Cynthia, who was currently trying to hide herself behind me and only occasionally peeked her head out. “Aha! So there was someone else after all. What’s your name, little one?”

  “C-Cynthia…” Her fear of strangers never seemed to get better, and she was even more shy now that she had been noticed. How is this the same girl that can fight on par with small armies?

  “Well, Cynthia, it’s nice to meet you. My name’s Rusty. I take it you’re a friend of Denise and Jin?”

  She nodded her head ever so slightly, grabbing a fistful of my robe as if she thought I might float away. “Y-yeah. I’m traveling.. with them.”

  “Really, now?” Rusty shot a look at me, and I could just imagine that he thought I was doing indecent things to the
underage girl. Helplessly, I shook my head.

  “Denise picked her.” That explanation alone seemed to satisfy him, and his demeanor towards Cynthia improved immediately.

  “Oh, I see. Well then, how many rooms will the three of you be wanting?”

  Denise, Cynthia, and I all looked at each other, before I returned my gaze to Rusty. “Two, please.”

  “Hmm, okay then. That’ll be 60 gild.” His head nodded heavily at his words. Without a moment of hesitation, I handed over six silver coins. I didn’t bother worrying about the increase in price, since that was probably one of the reasons he had been able to afford so many improvements to this place in a short time.

  “Thanks. Also, thanks for helping me with that issue with Kevin.”